Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day026.13
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25
Q. No?
A. The background is that obviously the civil administration
found these mass executions unpleasant, the way they were
carried out, and they are looking for guidance from the
Ministry for the Eastern Territories, and they come back
and say, well, basically these executions have to be
carried out and any problem has to be solved together with
the highest SS and police leader. So I think this
Altemeyer's response could reflect the same kind of
discussions which was going on, that one has to do it in a
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different way. It did not say that the mass executions
have to be stopped.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that.
MR RAMPTON: That is all. I was anxious to put the two beside
each other, because, my Lord, plainly, when they are side
by side, what Bruns said about the continuation of
shootings implicitly is supported by the contemporaneous documentation.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: You did use the word resonance.
MR RAMPTON: Yes, resonance. Then I want to ask you about
something else very briefly, Dr Longerich. You were asked
again last week by Mr Irving in effect this. Did they not
always have to have a pretext when they shot the Jews in
the East, such as, oh well, they were plundering, or they
were partisans and so on and so forth?
A. It becomes clear from the Einsatzgruppen reports.
Q. You said, well, there was one absurd case where they
killed 7,000 Jews because the NKVD had massacred
some Ukrainians.
A. Yes.
Q. Can we just have a look at the Jager report, with which
I know you are familiar. You find that at page 147 of the
blue file, I hope. It is awfully long and it is very
grisly reading, so I am certainly not going to go through
it, but it is Einsatzkommando 3, which is part of
Einsatzgruppen A, is it not?
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A. Yes.
Q. This is by the subordinate officer, somebody called Jager,
and it reports that by the 1st December, or the end of
November, they have succeeded in slaughtering 137,346
people. That is on the sixth page.
A. Yes.
Q. Pass over the first few pages to page 3, will you? Now we
are in the middle of August 1941, and one needs only to
glance at the page, does one not, to see that they are
recording the murder of large numbers of Jewish men, women
and children without any reference to any kind of pretext,
excuse or justification?
A. Yes.
Q. Very occasionally, if you turn, for example, to page 151,
page 5 of the document, you see a pretext. You also see
incidentally, do you not, that some people from Berlin,
Munich, Frankfurt, Vienna and Breslow were killed in
November, towards the end of November, but you see in
brackets, after some of the entries for October and at the
bottom of the page, some kind of excuse or pretext, do you not?
A. Sorry, pretext of the killing of the German Jews?
Q. Yes. For example, the last entry for 2nd September 41, a
teil kommando in Vilner shot a total of about 3,500 Jewish
women and Jewish children in what they called a
Sonderaktion because some German soldiers were shot at or
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shot at by some Jews. Is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you know why it is that, throughout this document, such
pretexts or excuses are so scarce?
A. I think the Jager report is simply a different kind of
document than the Eignismeldung, so I think the people who
had to write Eignismeldung had clear orders to give a
reason for every killing. This is a different kind of
report. This is a summary report.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then you have partisans listed and then just Jews?
A. Yes.
MR RAMPTON: This is the raw material, is it, upon which the
Eignismeldungen would have been written, do you think?
A. I am not absolutely sure, because the Eignismeldung were
written on a daily basis, or on a monthly basis, and this
is a summary report. So it is part of a different
reporting system, if you want to say so.
Q. Who would this have been reported to, do you know? You
cannot tell from looking at it.
A. It says five copies. I do not know whether it is actually
mentioned here.
Q. My document runs out on page 9 ----
A. One has to look at the end whether there is a list of
distribution, but it definitely would go to the
Einsatzgruppen R.
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Q. Yes.
A. And probably, I do not know, a copy to the civil
administration, but I am not sure about that.
Q. What I was driving at is quite a simple point really. Do
you think, Dr Longerich, that it is possible that, if this
was, as it were, a local document, in other words this
document is kept within Einsatzgruppen A's area, yes,
before the figures were compiled and sent to Berlin, that
there would be more openness than there was when the
figures went on from wherever it was to Berlin?
A. Yes. I think it is simply the number of copies is very limited.
Q. Yes.
A. We know that the Eignismeldung had 55 and more copies. So
I think this is a confusion which is possible.
Q. I have one final thing I want to ask you about, which will
not take very long, and it is this. You were telling us,
I think it was on Thursday last week but it might have
been Wednesday, about a system which either was planned or
which evolved whereby the Jews and the General Government
were deported and killed at the extermination camps to
make way for Jews from the West or from the south.
A. At the beginning, yes.
Q. I would like, because I think this will help us all and
certainly me, at the end of the day if we could do a short
chronology. The gassings in the Warthegau at Chelmno
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began on 8th December 1941?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. Who were the Jews that were killed there, first of all?
A. The local Jews. The Jews from villages from the
Warthegau.
Q. And then?
A. Then the Jews from the Lodz ghetto beginning in January.
Q. The German for Chelmno is Kulmhof?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: How is that spelt?
MR RAMPTON: K U L M H O F. Chelmno, I call it.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I call it Chelmno.
MR RAMPTON: Do you know roughly how many of the local Jews
were killed at Kulmhof or Chelmno?
A. The estimation is about 140,000 minimum, plus then the
German Jews who were ----
Q. I was coming on to that. Were some German Jews killed at
Chelmno in due course?
A. Yes. We know about one so-called action where about
10,000 Jews from Central Europe, Germany, Austria the
Protectorate, were killed in Chelmno in May 1942.
Q. In May 1942?
A. Yes.
Q. And what about the Reinhardt camps? Belzec was being
built in late 41, was it not?
A. They started to build it in November 1941.
Q. And when did they start killing people at Belzec?
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A. They started in March 1942.
Q. March 42?
A. Yes.
Q. And the other two, Treblinka and Sobibor?
A. They started to build Sobibor approximately in February,
and it became, what do you say about an extermination, it
became operational, I think, in May 1942. Then Treblinka,
they started to build Treblinka in May and the systematic
killing in Treblinka started in July 1942.
Q. Systematic killings at Treblinka and Sobibor?
A. Sobibor started a little bit earlier.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did they have the same pattern, Treblinka,
Sobibor and Belzec, starting by killing the local Jews?
A. Yes.
Q. Then the Jews from Germany?
A. It is a little bit different from camp to camp. In Belzec
they started first of all to kill the local Jews and then
later on also, as far as I recall it rightly, other Jews.
It is a different operation. Belzec was built first of
all to kill the Jews of the district of Lublin whereas,
when you move on two or three months, you can see that
actually the three Reinhardt camps were there to kill all
the Jews in the Generalgouvernement, so it is different.
You can see that they moved a step forwards during spring 1942.
MR RAMPTON: Did they eventually start killing Jews from the
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outReich, the Protectorate and other parts of Europe
systematically at these three camps?
A. Not at these three camps. You can see that the systematic
killings of Jews from central Europe started, for
instance, in Minsk. It is the same pattern, like in
Chelmno. They first of all brought into the ghetto, but
then from May 1942 onwards they killed them on the spot
before they came into the ghetto in a small concentration
camp called Malitrostiness.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: By shooting them?
A. By shooting them, yes.
MR RAMPTON: Then of course we have left out of account Auschwitz.
A. Yes.
Q. Most, I believe I am right, I do not know whether you
agree, of the Jews that were taken there were not Polish Jews?
A. Yes, but I should add this. In Belzec, of course, they
started to kill the local Jews and then, a little bit
further, the German Jews who were brought into the
ghettoes in the district of Lublin. Then, as far as they
survived the conditions of the ghetto, taken to Belzec
from approximately May/June 1942 onwards.
Q. I just want to look finally, if we may, Dr Longerich, at
one document which illustrates, I think, at least
I believe I am right, what you have been telling us about
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the way this system worked, or how it developed. It is at
page 243, I think. This is one document, my Lord, for
which I humbly apologise we have no translation.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is unusual in that respect.
MR RAMPTON: No. We have improved a lot. A lot of the
documents do have translations. Is this a printed
version, the document No. 218, of a Gestapo report from
Lodz dated 9th June 1942?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. There is a table above it. Do you know who compiled that table?
A. They are two different documents.
Q. I know they are.
A. It says here, the Meldeburo, the registration office.
I think that is probably the registration office of the
Jewish Council of Lodz, because they would do the
registration work.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is deaths in the ghettoes, is it not?
A. Yes.
MR RAMPTON: These are the comings and goings into the ghetto
and out of the ghetto, are they not?
A. Yes.
Q. There are some people coming in on the left-hand side
under zugang?
A. Yes.
Q. Ein gesiedelte aus dem Reich und - what is WRTL?
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A. Wartheland.
Q. Yes, I see. In May 7,000 odd came into the ghetto, but
I am interested more in the Abgang column which is the
people who had gone for one reason or another. The left
hand column, Gestoben, are the dead people, are they not?
A. Yes.
Q. Then the greatest number by far, a total I think of about
55,000, are said to have gone, they have been ausgesiedelt
nach Kulmhof?
A. Yes. Kulmhof is a very small village.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Chelmno.
A. That is Chelmno.
MR RAMPTON: Some were ausgesiedelt zur arbiet, do you see?
A. Yes.
Q. Not very many but some were. Then the totals. Can we
look at the Gestapo report of 9th June which is just
underneath that table. Can I read to you a translation,
if you would not mind following it in the German. It is
on the subject of the Jews or Judentum, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. You tell me, with the help the interpreter, when I go
wrong. "With regard to the Jews" or Jewry "the work of
the State police focused on the Gau Ghetto in
Litzmanstadt". That is German for Lodz, is it not?
A. Yes, the German name.
Q. Litzmanstadt, "which was to be built according to the
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instructions of the Gauleiter".
A. Yes.
Q. Good. I did not do this translation so I take no credit
for it. "Upon instruction of the Gauleiter all Jews not
fit for work shall be evacuated and those fit for work in
the whole Gau collected in the Litzmanstadt ghetto". Yes?
A. Yes.
Q. "From here larger proportions of Jews shall be used in the
Gau area for various kinds of work (building of rail track
and roads) and shall be returned into the ghetto again
after the end of work. Those Jews remaining in the ghetto
shall be without exception used for work there. In the
course of building the Gau ghetto, firstly, it appeared
necessary to create space for the Jews who were to be
settled there. For this purpose a larger number of Jews
not fit for work was evacuated from the ghetto and handed
over to the sonderkommando". Correct?
A. Yes.

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